U.S. Presidential Candidates Ignoring Urban Issues

Despite the large number of Americans now living in cities, urban issues have been astonishingly absent from the U.S. presidential debates. PPS did a spoof article for Faking Places, the annual April Fool’s Newsletter, in which Hillary, McCain and Obama make promises for more livable neighborhoods. The glaring omission of urban issues from the national discourse is actually no laughing matter.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

“There are three times as many urbanites in America as country folk, yet you wouldn’t know it listening to the three main presidential candidates, or perusing their Web sites. Instead, you might come away thinking the United States is a collection of Norman Rockwell small towns surrounded by picture-book farms.”

“Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Over the longer term, we know that the amount
of fuel we will use is directly related to our land use decisions and development patterns, much of which have been organized around the principle of cheap gasoline. Barack Obama believes that we
must move beyond our simple fixation of investing so many of our transportation dollars in serving
drivers and that we must make more investments that make it easier for us to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives.”

While it is not much, and almost entirely absent from the national debate, at least he gets the connection between land-use, cheap energy, and livability.

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